During the second hour, Nicholson explained how Wilson County commissioners were receiving hundreds of emails from Brooklyn based left-wing groups trying to appeal to the commissioner’s emotional side in efforts to discourage them from moving forward with their resolutions against the refugee resettlement program in Tennessee.

Leahy: I want to turn our attention now to a very important local issue. It’s our lead story at the TennesseeStar.com. And here to talk with us about it this morning our good friend, former Wilson County Republican Party chairman, Terri Nicholson.

Good morning, Terri!

Nicholson: Hey, good morning! How are you?

Leahy: Great to be with you. What caught my attention here is that there’s a group called the Tennessee County Services Association. And they’re executive director is a guy by the name of David Connor. And he wrote a letter which seemed to indicate that the county’s here in Tennessee really don’t have any impact on this refugee resettlement.

I’ll read from the letter and we’ll go back over why you are convinced that this interpretation is entirely incorrect. It’s important because tonight, the Wilson County Commission is going to discuss this. Connor wrote, ‘Prior to this injunction Governor Lee and the mayors of some urban counties where this refugee resettlement programs operated have continues to receive refugees. Depending on the outcome of the litigation it is unknown, Connor wrote whether consent will still be required.’ What’s your take on this Terri?

Nicholson: When you go and you speak to the state department they do not give you an answer right now as far as what happens. What happens if you do not consent? Another key point that he failed to mention was the lawsuit that the Thomas Moore Law Center filed on behalf of Tennessee which prompted the need for counties to pass the resolution.

Our resolution is on behalf of them. His reference to the federal court in Maryland issuing a preliminary injunction has no bearing on our resolution here in Wilson County. Our resolution is to support our state legislature and their efforts to support our state sovereignty and individual rights.

Leahy: Terri, when you look at this for a bit, your eyes can kind of glaze over but just to give you a kind of background on it. Refugees have been resettled in the United States since 1980. Under the Obama administration, we had 90,000 a year. This year, President Trump honoring a campaign promise has done a couple of things.

The number of refugees allowed to come in is only 18,0000. That’s point number one. Honoring a campaign promise that no refugees can come into a state or county unless you get local approval of it. The bureaucrats at the state department put out guidance that kind of twisted that in my view.

And said, well if the Governor says it’s okay then it should be okay. There were 43 governors that have weighed in. Governor Lee was one that said, yes yes, we want more refugees! In Texas, Greg Abbott said no we don’t want more refugees. And you really on this program here, you and Michelle Foreman kind of started a firestorm across the state of Tennessee (Nicholson chuckles). How many counties have said no to refugees?

Nicholson: Well I’ve been trying to keep a count of that information because everybody wants to get their hands on that master list. the last time I looked was about two days ago when I tried to compile it we were up to 41.

Leahy: 41? Are you kidding me?

Nicholson: That’s 41 in counties who have taken some sort of action. Either they’ve already heard it in committee and passed it or they are in the process of reviewing and they will have it on their agendas for February and on of them into March. You know there is no deadline for signing a resolution or making a statement saying this county does not want to participate. So they have time to make their wishes known. This is not something that they have a deadline against.

Leahy: Yeah, and so what’s likely to happen here in my view is that the ruling by the Clinton appointed judge is likely to be overturned. What the counties say, not in Tennessee in particular matters not just for that likelihood but also because in 2016 as you point out, the Tennessee General Assembly sued the federal government to stop the program.

Nicholson: Absolutely, and if you go back and look and I don’t know if people will remember as far back. But go back and consider the 109th General Assembly. This was November 16, 2015, and at the time we had Lieutenant governor Ramsey and Speaker Beth Hardwell and they acknowledged the abundance of caution and the flow of refugees they said no.

(Commercial break)

Leahy: So tonight Terri, the Wilson County commission is going to hold a vote whether to say yes we want more refugees in Wilson County or no. What’s your take on how this will proceed?

Nicholson: At first when you and I spoke two weeks ago or so when it first broke everything was going well. And the information was getting out locally to our constituents and so forth. And everybody was understanding pretty much what was going to happen and the two resolutions were put forth. What’s happened since then is so interesting is we’ve had all these outside agencies and they are trying to contact our county commissioners.

Leahy: So left-wing, out of county left-wingers?

Nicholson: Yes. Literally TIRC.

Leahy: Tennessee Immigration Rights Coalition. A bunch of George Soros left-wingers who want to bring in as many refugees as possible because we just don’t have enough of them.

Nicholson: Absolutely.

Leahy: This is an organized political effort to politically intimidate residents of Wilison County and Wilson County Commissioners it seems to me. How’s it look to you?

Nicholson: Absolutely. With that and TIRC and also with Mr. Connors’s office, TCSA. Basically his communication more than anything was written to help counties avoid having to address the issue at all.

Leahy: But the residents of the county want them to weigh in on it from what I can tell.

Nicholson: Absolutely. If you have 25 county commissioners that represent you, you absolutely want your voice represented. And that’s where my advocacy and efforts have come into play. I’ve contacted and worked closely with our 25 county commissioners. I’ve sent nice emails explaining the whole thing. I’ve been approaching it, Michael, from a factual standpoint.

Whereas the outside groups are purely emotional. Mine is facts and strictly related to the infrastructure of Tennessee and Wilson county. And the whole idea behind that is your county willing and able. And that’s what President Trump wanted to know when he put forth the executive order giving the local county’s specific opportunity to state if they were willing and able. And that was completely bypassed for Wilson County and other counties that didn’t get that voice.

Leahy: Let’s talk about the political intimidation efforts by non-residents of Wilson County to influence the votes tonight of Wilson County commissioners. How many commissioners are there? 25 you say?

Nicholson: We’ve got 25.

Leahy: I’m hearing that many commissioners are receiving email communications from up to 100 folks who don’t live in Wilson County making these arguments. Is that the case? Like people from Brooklyn, New York trying to tell Wilson County what to do?

Nicholson: Yes. That is completely the case. I received a phone call Saturday afternoon and our county commissioners have been hit with 175 emails.

Leahy: What?

Nicholson: Yes. 175.

Leahy: Now this is a Wilson County commissioner who represents a district in Wilson County right?

Nicholson: Yes.

Leahy: There are 25 commissioners. They are all at the district level or at large in Wilson county?

Nicholson: Well, they have all of our districts and precincts are completely covered. So that is the whole entire county.

Leahy: So a county commissioner would represent an area with a population of 5,000, 6,000 something like that?

Nicholson: Or more depending like you said on the population.

Leahy: But none of these 174 ‘let the refugee’s in folks’ that communicated with at least one commissioner none of them live in Wilson County or in their district. Is that right?

Nicholson: I spoke with one commissioner last night and she had a Democrat in her area. She was represented and that was the only one. I think two or three out of her entire population base had heard about the resolution and encouraged her to vote against it. And then all these other emails came.

I received several that they had passed to me. It’s so funny how it comes from Brooklyn, New York. Some of them came here from California. One from Nashville which was close by. And the other from Washington. That’s just a sampling Michael of what they received.

Leahy: This sounds to me like an attempt at political colonization of Wilson County by the elite living in New York and Washington and California. That’s what it sounds like to me.

Our culture has developed into one of passion, impulse, emotion, and self-worship. This is especially prevalent in the young generations. We’ve been raised with an aversion to delayed gratification.

Patience is a dying virtue. We get aggravated when our browser doesn’t load on our Smartphone instantaneously, we get annoyed when a package from Amazon is delayed by one day, and we rather spend the extra money on AirPods rather than put it in our savings. This is not a self-righteous lecture; I am guilty of succumbing to the pull of instant gratification. It’s all too easy – in a world of immediate goods, services, and convenience, our tolerance to delayed results has become one of our biggest vices. This intolerance has festered in every facet of our lives; creating a culture that seeks immediate satisfaction at the expense of not only our future but our character.

The chase of immediate gratification requires uninterrupted focus on one thing — yourself. Our desires, urges, goals, ambitions, no matter how well intentioned or destructive are the fuel that drives our every action. Our purpose is not rooted in any higher calling but on what minimizes our perceived suffering and maximizes our pleasure. This is why religiosity is rapidly declining while narcissism, the idea of self-love, depression, and suicide skyrocket. Religion requires you to seek glorification of God. Depression along with self-love and narcissism requires you to seek sanctification of yourself.

Our hyper focus on the self and our selfish ambition has produced adverse consequences in our society beyond rising rates of anxiety, depression, suicide, and rampant entitlement. Marriage rates have declined while divorce rates increase. Open relationships, polyamory, and other non-monogamous arrangements have been steadily increasing in popularity in the past decade. Young people are delaying marriage and younger couples are having fewer kids resulting in a decline in the nation’s birthrate.

Why live for a spouse or kids if you can live for yourself? Sleep with who you want, skip the 401k and travel, get a puppy instead of having a child, go to that $60k university and spend it partying while majoring in Gender Studies, ignore the Bible because all it really does is make you feel guilty, your “heart” should be your guide, and do whatever “feels right.” These are the commandments of today’s generations. No longer do we feel subject to what we all viewed as objective morality provided to us by Judeo-Christian tradition. The very tradition that built Western society and afforded us all of the luxuries we now covet and abuse in our quest for instant gratification.

Our obsession with meeting our wants immediately has given rise to an economic system that killed 100 million people in the 20th century alone; socialism. The idea of receiving the privileges made possible to us by capitalism free of charge has clouded our judgement, intellect, and frankly, our sanity. Free college, free healthcare, free housing, and the insistence of putting the word “right” in front of everything. You have a “right” to an abortion, a “right” to tuition forgiveness, or a “right” to not be offended is the prerequisite for policy popularity. Everything is looked at through a short-term lens, while the long-term suffers. What is labeled “free” will inevitably be paid for. What is labeled a “right” has a hefty price tag at the expense of individual liberty.

Giving into our every whim; we call this freedom. But it’s not freedom. In fact, it’s the opposite. Feeling the need to act on every sudden impulse, emotion, or desire to feel that temporary rush of pleasure and satisfaction is not liberation; it’s slavery. You are a slave to your impulses, shackled to mere brain activity that holds no obligation to logic, ration, or morality. True freedom is discipline. True freedom is being overwhelmed by the urge to take the shortcut, to give into depravity, or act on a destructive behavior and saying no.

Superficial indulgences of life have consumed our existence as we’ve adapted to an instantaneous world. We do need to focus in on ourselves, but not for hedonism but rather self-reflection. We need to step back and realize there is more to life than acting on our temporary emotions and calling it deliverance. The easiest thing anyone can ever do in life is give into every possible feeling. It’s discipline, patience, self-control, and looking beyond yourself that is hard. We live in a society where living for more than our own instant gratification is going against the grain – it’s being a rebel. I don’t know about you, but if going against the grain means giving up a life of confinement to instant satisfaction for long-term fulfillment then call me rebellious.

Our culture has developed into one of passion, impulse, emotion, and self-worship. This is especially prevalent in the young generations. We’ve been raised with an aversion to delayed gratification.

Patience is a dying virtue. We get aggravated when our browser doesn’t load on our Smartphone instantaneously, we get annoyed when a package from Amazon is delayed by one day, and we rather spend the extra money on AirPods rather than put it in our savings. This is not a self-righteous lecture; I am guilty of succumbing to the pull of instant gratification. It’s all too easy – in a world of immediate goods, services, and convenience, our tolerance to delayed results has become one of our biggest vices. This intolerance has festered in every facet of our lives; creating a culture that seeks immediate satisfaction at the expense of not only our future but our character.

The chase of immediate gratification requires uninterrupted focus on one thing — yourself. Our desires, urges, goals, ambitions, no matter how well intentioned or destructive are the fuel that drives our every action. Our purpose is not rooted in any higher calling but on what minimizes our perceived suffering and maximizes our pleasure. This is why religiosity is rapidly declining while narcissism, the idea of self-love, depression, and suicide skyrocket. Religion requires you to seek glorification of God. Depression along with self-love and narcissism requires you to seek sanctification of yourself.

Our hyper focus on the self and our selfish ambition has produced adverse consequences in our society beyond rising rates of anxiety, depression, suicide, and rampant entitlement. Marriage rates have declined while divorce rates increase. Open relationships, polyamory, and other non-monogamous arrangements have been steadily increasing in popularity in the past decade. Young people are delaying marriage and younger couples are having fewer kids resulting in a decline in the nation’s birthrate.

Why live for a spouse or kids if you can live for yourself? Sleep with who you want, skip the 401k and travel, get a puppy instead of having a child, go to that $60k university and spend it partying while majoring in Gender Studies, ignore the Bible because all it really does is make you feel guilty, your “heart” should be your guide, and do whatever “feels right.” These are the commandments of today’s generations. No longer do we feel subject to what we all viewed as objective morality provided to us by Judeo-Christian tradition. The very tradition that built Western society and afforded us all of the luxuries we now covet and abuse in our quest for instant gratification.

Our obsession with meeting our wants immediately has given rise to an economic system that killed 100 million people in the 20th century alone; socialism. The idea of receiving the privileges made possible to us by capitalism free of charge has clouded our judgement, intellect, and frankly, our sanity. Free college, free healthcare, free housing, and the insistence of putting the word “right” in front of everything. You have a “right” to an abortion, a “right” to tuition forgiveness, or a “right” to not be offended is the prerequisite for policy popularity. Everything is looked at through a short-term lens, while the long-term suffers. What is labeled “free” will inevitably be paid for. What is labeled a “right” has a hefty price tag at the expense of individual liberty.

Giving into our every whim; we call this freedom. But it’s not freedom. In fact, it’s the opposite. Feeling the need to act on every sudden impulse, emotion, or desire to feel that temporary rush of pleasure and satisfaction is not liberation; it’s slavery. You are a slave to your impulses, shackled to mere brain activity that holds no obligation to logic, ration, or morality. True freedom is discipline. True freedom is being overwhelmed by the urge to take the shortcut, to give into depravity, or act on a destructive behavior and saying no.

Superficial indulgences of life have consumed our existence as we’ve adapted to an instantaneous world. We do need to focus in on ourselves, but not for hedonism but rather self-reflection. We need to step back and realize there is more to life than acting on our temporary emotions and calling it deliverance. The easiest thing anyone can ever do in life is give into every possible feeling. It’s discipline, patience, self-control, and looking beyond yourself that is hard. We live in a society where living for more than our own instant gratification is going against the grain – it’s being a rebel. I don’t know about you, but if going against the grain means giving up a life of confinement to instant satisfaction for long-term fulfillment then call me rebellious.

The Origin of ‘Drag Queen Story Hour:’ Read Stories of Gender Identity and Same-Sex Relationships to Children Three to Eight Years Old

by Mary Margaret Olohan

Drag Queen Story Hours started out as niche events on the West Coast, but these events — aimed at children as young as age 3 — have spread to libraries and schools across the United States, dividing local communities.

These story hours are “just what they sound like,” Drag Queen Story Hour’s official website states: drag queens reading to children. The events are designed to be about 45 minutes long for children aged 3 to 8 years old, intended to capture children’s imagination and help children explore their gender fluidity through “glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.”

Books used during Drag Queen Story Hours focus on gender identity and same-sex relationships. At a Jan. 22 Drag Queen Story Hour in Ithaca, New York, drag queens Coraline Chardonnay and Tilia Cordata read the books “Prince and Knight” and “Maiden and Princess,” books created to explore gender through fantasy.

“In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real,” the Drag Queen Story Hour’s website states.

The New York City–based organization did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Queer author Michelle Tea reportedly organized the first Drag Queen Story Hour in San Francisco, California, in 2015. Tea had just given birth to a baby boy and frequently attended library story hours, but said they were “really straight” and did not properly include her queer family.

“There is just a sort of flair with which queers do anything,” she told BuzzFeed News in November 2018. Tea did not respond to requests for comment from the DCNF. “It’s just a certain sense of humor, a sense of the fantastic.”

Tea collaborated with RADAR Productions, a queer literary arts organization she founded in 2003, to produce the first Drag Queen Story Hour at a library in the historically LGBTQ San Francisco neighborhood of Castro. At the first Drag Queen Story Hour, a drag queen read a “queer-inclusive book” to children.

“It was a huge hit,” Tea said, “and then it just spread.”

San Francisco Public Library spokeswoman Michelle Jeffers confirmed to the DCNF that this story hour took place at the Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial Branch Library. Jeffers also said that “Michelle Tea, specifically, was not involved as the presenter or host,” though Radar Productions presented the story hour.

Now that President Donald Trump is in office, leaders like Tea say the story hours are more of an “act of rebellion than it was before.”

“Under Obama, [Drag Queen Story Hour] just seemed like a really fun program to do — it was just fun — and it still is that, especially for the kids, but I think that one of the reasons why it is so popular right now is people are looking for things to support in space of what is happening to our culture, where so much hate is being emboldened,” Tea told BuzzFeed.

Rachel Aimee, the Drag Queen Story Hour coordinator for New York, told The New York Times in 2017 that she noticed a Facebook post about Tea’s event.

“And as soon as I saw it, I said, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been waiting for,’” Aimee said.

Aimee hosted her first Drag Queen Story Hour at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn in August 2016. That event reportedly caught the eye of several other local librarians and spread Drag Queen Story Hours throughout New York City.

“Children love dressing up and being imaginative in what they wear,” Aimee told The NYT. “They see drag queens as people who are doing the same thing, expressing themselves creatively and having fun with it. Also, kids have a much more fluid understanding of gender than most adults do.”

Aimee also started a training program for Drag Queen Story Hour for autistic children.

The official Drag Queen Story Hour website boasts 45 independently operated chapters across the United States, in New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and more. The story hour also has two international chapters: one in Tokyo and one in Berlin.

The American Library Association has also backed the movement and offers a plethora of resources on its website “to support libraries facing challenges.” A spokeswoman told the DCNF in a statement that the ALA “strongly supports the rights of libraries to host whatever programming they decide fits the needs and interests of their communities.”

“ALA strongly opposes any effort to limit access to information, ideas and programs that patrons wish to explore,” the statement said, adding that outside organizations often produce programs at local libraries because libraries do not restrict these events “based on the organization’s background, beliefs, or content of the program.”

“ALA believes that providing library users with the freedom to explore an array of viewpoints, libraries help them develop into thoughtful members of society,” the statement added.

The story hours are not only hosted at libraries. The organization noted that they are also hosted at “schools, bookstores, museums, summer camps, afterschool programs, and other community spaces.”

Videographer Sean Fitzgerald and the David Horowitz Freedom Center created a 2018 video showing that kindergarten through 12th grade teachers were bringing drag queens into schools, through the Drag Queen Story Hour organization, to teach gender ideology. The video highlights teachers praising drag queens for coming into public schools and reading books on gender ideology to children.

“Drag Queen Story Hour gave my first graders a fun and interactive platform to talk and think about social and emotional issues like acceptance, being yourself, and loving who you are,” one teacher said. “During our debrief … [students] were preaching the incredible lessons they had learned, like ‘it’s OK to be different,’ and ‘there’s no such thing as ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ things.’”

The story hours are often met with resistance from local communities, religious groups, and citizens concerned that the events expose children to confusing gender theories and sexual behavior inappropriate for their age.

Pro-family groups like the Family Policy Alliance said they push back against Drag Queen Story Hours out of fear that these highly sexualized events will become “regularly featured events in public libraries and even schools across America,” Family Policy Alliance Executive Director Vince Torres told the DCNF.

“In addition to promoting gender fluidity, there is an underlying effort to undermine parents’ authority in the lives of their children,” Torres said. “As such, parents need to be aware of this and other efforts aimed at sexualizing and indoctrinating their children.”

President Michele Lentz of the Child Protection League (CPL) said the growth of Drag Queen Story Hours is a “coordinated, well-funded plan” that is “neither organic nor spontaneous in the cities in which it is occurring.”

“If you peel back the layers, so to speak, one first sees the origin in California through corporate-funded and American Library Association (ALA) promoted events,” Lentz told the DCNF. “The ALA has been one of if not the largest promoter of DQSH across the country. Their reputation as social change agents has been well documented over the years.”

Sometimes these protests end in cancellations of Drag Queen Story Hours and action from lawmakers.

A New Jersey library canceled a scheduled drag queen story hour after two days of nonstop calls after the story hour was announced. In a January response to Drag Queen Story Hours, Republican Missouri state Rep. Ben Baker introduced the Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act, a bill that would require all Missouri libraries to establish parental review boards that would have to approve all library events and materials.

The FPA is also working with the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) to encourage local officials to adopt similar policies, Torres said.

“We are also encouraging concerned parents and citizens to contact their local governments when these events come to town,” he added, pointing out that many Drag Queen Story Hour events have been canceled due to public outcry and pressure. “Our hope is that libraries across the country will reach the same conclusion we have — drag queen programs are inappropriate for children and libraries should not be hosting or promoting them.”

Lentz said the CPL’s actions will help other groups to stand up against the story hours.

“CPL will continue to alert and equip parents to take actions such as confronting their county commissioners, library boards, and other community leaders, demanding they stop DQSH and holding them accountable if they don’t,” she said.

Protesters gathered as recently as Jan. 4 to stand against a city-sponsored Drag Queen Story Hour at the Lafayette Public Library in Louisiana. Almost 200 members of the LGBTQ group “Parasol Patrol” stood around the entrance to the library twirling rainbow umbrellas to shield attendees from the protesters.

The event was met with strong opposition from the Family Policy Alliance, Lafayette City-Parish Council, from conservatives, and from anti-tax groups. One library board member resigned from his seat over the matter, and hundreds of concerned citizens sent letters to the library board through the Family Policy Alliance. But the event still took place.

“That’s what these stories teach, is that we should love everyone and we are inclusive,” said Lafayette Mayor Jamie Harkins. “Lafayette prides itself on our diversity and support for diversity and that’s why you are seeing such a big crowd today, because they want to take a stand.”

Stuart Sanks, a drag performer who goes by the persona of Shirley Delta Blow, read at the story hour wearing a dress with cartoon unicorns on it, a gigantic pink wig, an oversized pearl necklace and glittery earrings.

The problem is not abortion. Abortion is the symptom of the problem you and I have. We have lost God as maker.

By Christopher Esget, JANUARY 24, 2020

The following is a sermon given before Divine Service — the service of the Word and Sacrament — before the listeners participated in today’s March for Life in Washington, DC.

“This man dealt treacherously with our people, and oppressed our forefathers, making them expose their babies, so that they might not live” (Acts 7:19). “So that they might not live.” That’s the first martyr, Stephen. Recounting the slaughter of Hebrew babies, Stephen uses an interesting expression. “So that they might not live.”

It’s the same expression used in today’s epistle: “I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things.” “Who gives life.” It’s all built on the word Zoē—like the girl’s name Zoe, or zoology. You go to a zoo to see living things.

When that word is used about humans, it means a decision about leaving someone alive. Pharaoh exposed the Hebrew babies, “So that they might not live.” He didn’t leave them alive.

But whenever it means to give life, God is the subject, the doer. “I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life.” Man cannot give life, we can only let live—or not let live, a.k.a. murder. Only God can give life. Only God has the power of life in himself.

St. Irenaeus said, “God makes, man is made.” Deus facit, homo fit.

That’s the problem, that we have forgotten we are made. Made by God. Yes, yes, you believe in creation. But don’t run so quickly past it. Psalm 100 hints at the implications: “Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.”

The godless philosophy of our age has cast aside God for the myth of mutation. And make no mistake, that’s not science, that’s philosophy masquerading as science. “It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves”—but we ourselves cast aside God with every act of covetousness. We rebel against our Father when we calculate how much money a child will cost, as though He who gives life will not give us our daily bread. We rebel against our Father when we look at evil images, as though a human body is an object to be used and discarded. We rebel against our Father when we worry about tomorrow, as though He does not order our days.

When we put off praying, we confess, “He has not made me, but I make myself.” With every thoughtless bite of food; with every evening that ends without confession and thanksgiving; with each consent to greed, gossip, revenge, lust; with every lie we believe the lie, that we can be as God. In a thousand small, insidious ways, our lives say, “It is not He who has made us, but we ourselves.”

The problem is not abortion. Abortion is the symptom of the problem you and I have. We have lost God as maker. And with that loss, we have forgotten that we are made, that we stand as recipients of His life, under His ordering and stewards of His gifts. The culture of death infects us all.

Into this culture of death, into this world of death, steps Jesus. In Him was life. That familiar passage in John’s gospel about Jesus, “In Him was life,” can in fact be translated this way: “That which has come to pass in Him was life.”

What in heaven does that mean? It means that for God, life is not a static thing. It’s not a thing at all, as though we could find and possess life the way we might take hold of a basketball or a burrito. Life is not a thing, but in God it is an activity, a continual self-giving. Life is almost, then, a verb, an action, like love.

The things that have come to pass in Jesus is His self-giving. He becomes a fetus in Mary’s womb; He becomes a crying infant, cold and hungry; He becomes a desert wanderer, starving and tormented by demons; He becomes the subject of slander and spitting; He is whipped, and pierced; He is laid in the tomb. Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. That’s where life is found: in the crucified Jesus.

Today is St. Timothy’s day. Our hymnal calls him pastor and confessor. Not everyone is a pastor, and a pastor is not a superior Christian to others. But St. Timothy’s day is for all of us, for every one of us is called to be a confessor.

Who do you say Jesus is? That’s your confession. Are you one of His disciples? That’s your confession.

Today we don’t confess that we are against abortion. We are, of course. But that’s not quite it.

Today we don’t confess that we are pro-life. We are, of course. But that’s not quite it, either.

Today we confess that God gives life to all things. God makes, and we are made.

He makes life, and we leave alive.

Like the Hebrew midwives, we cannot stand idly by when pharaoh “[exposes] babies, so that they might not live.” We have an obligation to the victims of society. It is not enough, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, to bandage the wounds of those crushed by the wheel of injustice; “we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

This afternoon in the March for Life, and all year long, we demand an end to the injustice of abortion. We demand an end to the injustice of human trafficking, pornography, slavery, and the separation of children from their parents.

But we do so as confessors. We confess that we are sinners, great sinners, with the culture of death flowing in our veins and pulsing through our corrupted brains. And we confess that only in Jesus is the life we need.

“[One] man dealt treacherously … making them expose their babies, so that they might not live.” But another Man has come. The things that have come to pass in Him are life. He makes, and in Him, you are made alive.

Christopher S. Esget is senior pastor of Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Alexandria, Virginia.

NFL Player Ben Watson Making Pro-Life Documentary to “Unveil the Truth About Abortion”

MICAIAH BILGER JAN 21, 2020 | 3:55PM WASHINGTON, DC

When he is not playing football, New England Patriots tight end Benjamin Watson spends a lot of his time advocating for unborn babies.

Lately, the Christian athlete, husband and father of seven has been working on a pro-life documentary to “unveil the truth about abortion,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.

“Things are at a fever pitch,” Watson told the entertainment news outlet. “My goal is to unveil the truth about abortion, the laws, the history and where our country is headed.”

Watson, an African American, said his film will feature interviews with other prominent pro-life black leaders, including Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Dr. Ben Carson. It also will include interviews with pro-choice individuals.

“I believe in the sanctity of life, be it in the womb or on your deathbed. That’s my conviction. But with the film, I’ll engage those who disagree and hear their reasoning. The No. 1 thing I’m looking for is empathy on both sides,” he explained.

The documentary, “Divided Hearts of America,” began filming in May, and now is in the post-production phase, according to the report. Watson said the film has been a huge learning process, and he currently is negotiating with distributors.

“This has been a fun learning experience,” Watson said. “I didn’t know ‘P&A’ or any of the other terms. This is my first foray into filmmaking, but hopefully not my last.”

Part of what prompted the project was the slew of pro-life and pro-abortion laws that passed in 2019. Alabama approved a total abortion ban, and Georgia passed a law banning abortions after an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable, about six weeks of pregnancy. Neither are being enforced due to pro-abortion legal challenges. Meanwhile, New York, Illinois, Rhode Island and Vermont passed pro-abortion laws allowing unborn babies to be aborted for basically any reason up to birth.

“I never thought I’d be involved in a movie, but so many different laws have passed in New York, Alabama, Georgia, it seems this issue — which has always been a part of our national consciousness — has ramped up recently,” Watson told the news outlet.

Watson said he plans to retire from the NFL later this year. He and his wife run a nonprofit organization, One More Foundation, which focuses on hunger, poverty, prison reform and other matters. Watson also is a sought-after pro-life speaker.

Samantha Wiessing is a wife, mother of five, and the director of development for the children's rights nonprofit Them Before Us.

Lawmakers here in Tennessee are catching a lot of flack for their support of HB 836, which supposedly allows adoption agencies to “discriminate against” LGBTQ applicants. At first glance, it looks unfair. After all, we all have friends we know and love who are gay and who deserve to be treated fairly. But HB 836 sounds unfair only if we are looking at it from the adults' perspective. When we view adoption from the child’s perspective, prioritizing homes with both mothers and fathers not only makes sense, it’s critically important

For the first eight years of my life, I was raised by two gay men -- my father and his partner. My formative years were almost entirely devoid of women. I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as a mother until I watched "The Land Before Time" at school. My 5-year-old brain could not understand why I didn’t have the mom that I suddenly desperately wanted. I felt the loss. I felt the hole. As I grew, I tried to fill that hole with aunts, my dads’ lesbian friends and teachers. I remember asking my first-grade teacher if I could call her mom. I asked that question of any woman who showed me any amount of love and affection. It was instinctive. I craved a mother’s love even though I was well-loved by my two gay dads.

Gender matters in parenting

Why is that? Because gender matters in parenting. And because gender matters in parenting, that means gender matters when placing children for adoption. I have personally experienced the pain that motherlessness causes. I could never support any law or institution that endorses motherlessness. Many sociologists agree that fatherlessness is a scourge on our society. Why would anyone think that purposely depriving a child of the love of a mother or father is a good thing?

When it comes to HB 836, we need to be clear about who adoption is for. In adoption, the child is the client. Adoption is not about giving children to adults who want them. It’s about finding the best home for children who have lost their parents. When adoption is done right, every child will be placed in a loving home, but not every adult who wants a child will get one.

Next, we must recognize that for the child, adoption begins with loss. Even if they are placed with their adoptive parents at birth, adoptees suffer trauma as a result of being separated from their biological parents. As an adoptee who knows several other adoptees, I can tell you that it’s a trauma that affects children for life. The adoption agency’s job is to find a family that is best positioned to shepherd their child through her loss and trauma. There are multiple factors in that calculation -- from the couple’s finances, to background checks, to readiness to parent the child’s special needs, to relational stability, etc. But make no mistake, the presence of a father and a mother should be a factor in every agency’s calculation.

Men can't be mothers, and women can't be fathers

I know what I am about to say is unpopular, but it’s true nonetheless: Men cannot be mothers, and women cannot be fathers. Kids need both. The well-established difference between mothering and fathering reveals that men and women offer distinct and complementary benefits to children. From the ways they play, to the ways they talk, to how they discipline, to how they prepare children for the world. Male- and female-specific parenting optimizes child development. Tennessee agencies that recognize and prioritize homes where children will receive maternal and paternal love should be praised, not demonized.

I am not saying that gay couples cannot love and parent children well. I love my dad and his partner deeply, and we share a wonderful relationship. I acknowledge that there are times, given the child’s needs and availability of adoptive parents, when two fathers or two mothers may be the best placement for the child. But to say that the biological sex of the parents is irrelevant is based in ideology, not reality. I am also not saying that just because you are a married man and woman you are automatically qualified to adopt. Plenty of heterosexual couples will not make the cut. No adult, gay or straight, has a right to adopt. Rather, children who have lost their parents have a right to be adopted. And whenever possible, they should be adopted by a mom and dad.

Watch: In US Capitol Rotunda, ex-LGBTs pray, repent on behalf of nation for sin of homosexuality

ANALYSIS

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 1, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — An extraordinary event took place beneath the magnificent rotunda of the United States Capitol Wednesday night: Former gay, lesbian, and transgender men and women repented and interceded on behalf the nation for the sins of homosexuality and transgenderism.

They were part of a group which came to Washington this week to urge members of Congress to oppose the so-called “Equality Act” and “Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act” that would prevent others from seeking help to escape LGBT lives.

Moments before their entering the rotunda, NBC had published a story with a headline declaring that the group had come to D.C. “to lobby against LGBTQ rights,” yet that is not their purpose at all. They came to tell their stories of finding healing and fulfillment by rejecting the lies of LGBT ideology and turning to Christ.

“We repent on behalf of our country for the sins of arrogance, for the sins of sexual deviancy, for the sins that have led us to the place where we are today,” one man earnestly prayed as he stood beneath the Capitol dome.

“We repent for the sin of homosexuality. We repent for our part in it,” prayed another former homosexual. “We ask that you would forgive our nation for this. We ask you to hold back any judgement, and that you would hear our prayers and have mercy on us.”

Others joined in offering their heartfelt repentance and intercession.

“Push back the darkness,” prayed a woman who once lived as a lesbian.

“You created us male and female. You created us in Your Image. You have created man to find a wife and that is a good thing,” prayed another young woman. “We pray that the truth be revealed to those who have bought into the lies and deception. We pray that you remove the curtain of deception.”

“I repent for the lies that we have believed as far as who we are,” prayed a woman who had lived as a “man” for many years, but is now restored to her true identity. “Lord, we bought into the lie that you didn’t create us good enough. That we should have been something else.”

“I ask you to continue to drop the scales from the eyes of those who live in the deception of who they are, and let them see how they are created in your image, and that you do not make mistakes,” she continued. “I ask you to call them out of that lifestyle, call them out of that deception.”

They pleaded for those who are bound by deception, held captive by the enemy, to be set free. “Lord, we understand that those who hold other positions are not our enemy. We all have but one enemy.”

And they prayed for a great awakening across our land. Their prayer turned to beautiful worship, with their voices echoing throughout the Capitol building:

I’ll raise a Hallelujah, as Heaven comes to fight for me.
I’ll raise a Hallelujah, because fear has lost its hold on me.
And I’m going to sing in the middle of the storm,
Louder and louder, they’re gonna hear my praises roar.
Up from the ashes, hope will arise,
Death is defeated, the King is alive.

Death is defeated, the King is alive.

They sang to Jesus:

You have no rival, you have no equal
Now and forever, Our God reigns.
Yours is the Kingdom, Your’s is the glory,
Yours is the Name above all names.

What a powerful name it is,
What a powerful name it is:
The Name of Jesus Christ my King.
And they declared on behalf of the nation:

What can wash away my sins?
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.

And how precious is that Blood,
That makes me white as snow?

No other fount we know
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.

Death is defeated, the King is alive.

The hour-long spontaneous prayer erupted at the end of a tour of the historic building led by U.S. House members Doug LaMalfa, R-CA, and Louie Gohmert, R-TX, pro-life champions and defenders of religious liberty.

Pro-lifers and honest pro-abortion legal scholars agree that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. But just how wrong is it? Is it bad law solely because it declares a right to something the Constitution is silent about, or does its judicial malpractice run deeper?

I have long argued that legal abortion violates not only the spirit of the Constitution, but the text itself – specifically, that the Fourteenth Amendment’s guaranteed equal protection of all people’s right to life has always applied to the preborn. Now, The Stream reports that the “Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy” has published an article written by Harvard law student (and former Live Action contributor) Josh Craddock that lays out the case in perhaps the most depth it’s ever received.

The first key point of Craddock’s work, critiquing the late, great Justice Antonin Scaliafrom the right, is an audacious undertaking, but here it’s warranted. You see, while Scalia was a committed originalist and clear opponent of Roe, he was also of the opinion that the Constitution is neutral toward abortion – that its use of the word “persons” “clearly means walking-around persons,” and therefore, states should be left free to set whatever abortion laws they want. Craddock notes several other pro-life judicial originalists who hold (or held) this view, though Scalia is the most recent and most revered modernly.

Craddock concedes that there is some basis for this thinking because “natural rights were not exhaustively enshrined in the federal Constitution” and “states have traditionally decided the question of personhood.” However, he rightfully maintains that a truly originalist answer to the question has to consider what the word “persons” was understood to mean when the Fourteenth Amendment was written and ratified.

He proceeds to explain that layman’s dictionaries treated the concepts of humanity and personhood interchangeably, and so did legal terminology – more explicitly so, in fact. As we’ve discussed in the past, Craddock notes that Blackstone expressly recognized that personhood and the right to life existed before birth with a simple and clear legal standard: “where life can be shown to exist, legal personhood exists” (emphasis added). This also perfectly explains why it’s irrelevant that past laws didn’t protect the preborn prior to quickening.

Craddock next shows that many of the states that voted to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment had also criminalized abortion, meaning they understood personhood then in much the same way that pro-lifers understand it now:

By the time of the Fourteenth Amendment’s adoption, “nearly every state had criminal legislation proscribing abortion,” and most of these statutes were classified among “offenses against the person.” The original public meaning of the term “person” thus incontestably included prenatal life. Indeed, “there can be no doubt whatsoever that the word ‘person’ referred to the fetus.” In twenty‐three states and six territories, laws referred to the preborn individual as a “child.” Is it reasonable to presume that these legislatures would have used this terminology if “they had not considered the fetus to be a ‘person’”?

The adoption of strict anti‐abortion measures in the mid‐nineteenth century was the natural development of a long common‐law history proscribing abortion. Beginning in the mid‐thirteenth century, the common law codified abortion as homicide as soon as the child came to life (animation) and appeared recognizably human (formation), which occurred approximately 40 days after fertilization. Lord Coke later cited the “formed and animated standard,” rearticulating it as “quick with childe.”

From there, Craddock explains how the quickening standard was little more than a practical evidentiary standard, not a meaningful commentary on prenatal life (or lack thereof). But interestingly, he points out that even by the mid-nineteenth century, courts and states alike were increasingly rejecting it as scientifically obsolete, and replacing it with – surprise! – fertilization.

When the Amendment was adopted in 1868, the states widely recognized children in utero as persons. Twenty‐three states and six territories referred to the fetus as a “child” in their statutes proscribing abortion. At least twenty‐eight jurisdictions labeled abortion as an “offense[] against the person” or an equivalent criminal classification. Nine of the ratifying states explicitly valued the lives of the preborn and their pregnant mothers equally by providing the same range of punishment for killing either during the commission of an abortion. The “only plausible explanation” for this phenomenon is that “the legislatures considered the mother and child to be equal in their personhood.” Furthermore, ten states (nine of which had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment) considered abortion to be either manslaughter, assault with intent to murder, or murder.

Next, and perhaps most importantly, Craddock examines the thinking of the Fourteenth Amendment’s drafters. There’s an understandable assumption that because the amendment’s primary purpose was extending citizenship to freed blacks after the Civil War, its effects shouldn’t be construed to extend beyond that purpose. But under the originalist principle of authorial intent, the first word is often the last word in resolving such confusion:

Senator Jacob Howard, who sponsored the Amendment in the Senate, declared the Amendment’s purpose to “disable a state from depriving not merely a citizen of the United States, but any person, whoever he may be, of life, liberty and property without due process.” Even the lowest and “most despised of the [human] race” were guaranteed equal protection. Representative Thaddeus Stevens called the Amendment “a superstructure of perfect equality of every human being before the law; of impartial protection to everyone in whose breast God had placed an immortal soul” […] The primary Framer of the Fourteenth Amendment, Representative John Bingham, intended it to ensure that “no state in the Union should deny to any human being . . . the equal protection of the laws.”

In light of this evidence and reasoning (as well as rebuttals to possible objections I have skipped, but which you should take the time to read), Craddock concludes that there is only one proper constitutional approach to abortion:

If prenatal life is to be protected under the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress or the courts must intervene in states that do not guarantee equal protection and due process to preborn human beings. After all, “the [Fourteenth] amendment was designed to limit state power and authorize Congress to enforce such limitations.” Should a state refuse to protect prenatal life, it would be a violation of equal protection[.]

Exactly, and it’s not “statist” or “big government” or “judicial activism” to say so. The principle of limited government means the government mustn’t exceed its constitutional purposes, but protecting the right to life is its most basic purpose – and a national-level responsibility. While the Founding Fathers wanted federalism to leave states free to decide a wide range of policy decisions for themselves (so America’s large, diverse, spread out population could live in harmony under a single flag while expressing different secondary values and experimenting with different ideas), they also believed that a select few principles, like our most fundamental rights, require a uniform standard.

Craddock concludes on a pessimistic note, predicting that the Supreme Court is unlikely to abandon Roe anytime soon, making a human life amendment to the Constitution politically necessary even though it’s not legally necessary. That’s true for the time being…but it doesn’t have to be.

The past four decades’ worth of abortion jurisprudence has nothing to do with legal merit and almost everything to do with the partisan politics of the presidents who nominated judges and the senators who reviewed them. So while this rot has been allowed to fester for a long time, there are no legal barriers keeping us from challenging it – we need only the will and imagination to change our tactics.

This is where national-level pro-life activism needs to go…and fortunately, Josh Craddock has given that effort an unassailable foundation.

Editor’s Note, 10/17/18: The original headline of this article read ‘Harvard Law Journal concludes: The preborn child is a constitutional person,’ reflecting The Stream’s reporting of the title of Harvard’s press release with the same headline. We attempted to locate the original press release and cannot find it to verify its contents, so the title has been changed to: “Article in Harvard Law Journal concludes: The preborn child is a constitutional person.”

The midterm elections has Christians in churches throughout America once again considering what their faith teaches about cultural and political engagement, and how their beliefs should influence how they vote.

The gospel is a holistic message with implications for all areas of life, including how Christians are called to engage the political process.

This was a point understood by key figures in the twentieth century, including German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who advocated for the church's active engagement in politics. Four years before he was executed by the Nazis, he wrote, "A theologically correct Christian proclamation is not enough; neither are general ethical principles. What is necessary is a concrete directive in the concrete situation."

During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to activate the church in combating racial injustices that had long been ignored. It made no sense that those who professed belief in human dignity and equality should stay silent any longer. But many churches did, and King encountered much resistance from white churches who did not see systemic racial injustice as a matter that the church should get involved with.

To not repeat the failure of inaction by many white evangelical churches, the moral majority in the 1980s brought together a group of evangelicals from all denominations to confront the culture with God's Word and mobilize Christians to support likeminded candidates who would work to confront and undo cultural injustices.

As before, evangelicals are confronted with a moment of decision in 2018.

While some churches are still sitting silent on issues facing our culture, we believe the predominant question facing our churches today is not whether we should be involved in engaging the culture, but rather what does faithful Christian political engagement look like?

Today, Christians are inundated with resources on "how to think about (fill in the blank) as a Christian." However, many of the teachers producing these resources seem to look down on political activism that supports the very thing discussed in their "how a Christian should think about (fill in the blank)!" For them, political activism is somehow a bridge too far, and Christians who do this have stepped over the bounds into "idolatry."

Neither extreme—political withdrawal (while we wait for the perfect party or candidate) or idolatry of country—is acceptable. Both must be avoided.

In short, we need a model that is holistic and contextual.

It's not enough to train our members to be theological intellectuals yet leave them in the dark when it comes to putting their faith into action (James 2:7).

For example, how can we teach Christians to think rightly about human dignity and teach them to connect concepts such as "imago dei" with abortion but fail to train them on how to support candidates who would work to end the practice?

In the context of American politics, voting is a practical application of a biblical worldview. This is seen when our ability to participate in the democratic process is placed alongside Paul's teaching in Romans 13, where the apostle teaches that government is ordained by God to promote good and restrain evil. In America, because ultimate sovereignty resides with the people, voting is essentially the delegation of authority. For Christians, this means suffrage is inherently a matter of stewardship.

For Christians, applying our worldview in politics is a double-edged sword. We can meet the practical needs of people through our soup kitchens (poverty), pregnancy centers (life), the celebration of recoveries (pornography, drugs, addictions), and counseling (marriage, sexuality, family), while at the same time advocate for principles that foster an environment conducive for robust human flourishing. It's not an either/or scenario, but rather a both/and one. Our efforts to meet tangible needs can go together with political activism. The two can work together to display the glory and justice of God. Love for our neighbor requires nothing less—political activism is just a tool that puts that love into action.

Satan is out to steal, kill, and destroy and is using every tool and method to do it.

Therefore, we must use every resource at our disposal to impact our neighbors for the glory of God.

These midterm elections are full of candidates who will promote just or unjust policies. As citizens of heaven, how are we being faithful with the responsibilities and privileges God has given us in the city of man? Because of our unprecedented political freedom in America, Christians will be held to a high standard of accountability before God.

This is why we must engage the culture from a holistic biblical worldview.

To see and distribute our voter guides, go here. To find out how to establish a Culture Impact Team (CIT) in your church, go here.

Officials in four more counties announced Tuesday they either will or will likely oppose Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s decision to continue resettling refugees throughout the state.

Those four counties are Bedford, Fayette, Dyer, and Franklin.

Whether Lee and other governors will continue to have the power to decide such things is uncertain. But commissioners in two counties said Lee should have consulted with other elected officials before he announced anything.

“I think when you’re going to do something like this you need to consult with your constituents, and I think you need, just as importantly, to consult with the legislative body in Nashville. He could have gotten a pretty good idea of what his constituents were thinking on this whole issue and could have saved a lot of disruption within our (Republican)party if he would have done that,” Bedford County Commissioner Brent Smith told The Tennessee Star Wednesday.

“I guess there was some naivete. I feel like he was naïve in this decision, even though I support refugees — but I also think Tennessee has done its fair share (on this issue).”

Smith said he has crafted a resolution telling Lee no to more refugees. Smith said his colleagues might consider the resolution as early as next week.

Fayette County Commissioner Tim Goodroe, meanwhile, said Lee can do good works for refugees on his own time, but “in a government setting you have to look at practical matters.”

“There are many aspects that must be considered and many entities that should be brought into the decision-making process when it comes to managing government and lending resources,” Goodroe said in an email.

“Governor Lee did not do this when he gave consent and wrote his letter to Secretary Pompeo. Had he done this, I would hope that his letter would have read differently. I believe that Gov. Lee has a good Christian heart. I also believe he mismanaged this issue.”

Goodroe said he and his fellow commissioners will consider sending a resolution to Lee within the next two weeks.

Dyer County Mayor Chris Young said Wednesday that commissioners in his county have passed their own resolution to opt out of refugee resettlement.

Franklin County Mayor David Alexander, meanwhile, said commissioners they will not meet in February, but they will consider this matter in March.

As The Starreported this week, officials in Stewart, Tipton, Wilson, Cannon, Macon, and Loudon counties either oppose Lee on the refugee matter or will consider resolutions of their own stating as much.

In September, U.S. Republican President Donald Trump issued an executive order that enabled state and local governments to refuse resettling any more refugees in their states or localities.

But, regardless of what happens, Smith said there are good reasons to proceed with caution when taking in refugees.

“I believe that as soon as refugees are accepted in our country, legally, or any immigrant legally, they are an American, and I support that. But ‘legal’ is the key word. This isn’t about race,” Smith said.

“This isn’t about anything other than the fact that we’re already pretty much swamped in Bedford County, period. I don’t care if these refugees are from Africa, the Middle East, Scotland, Scandinavia, or Timbuktu. We need a break.”

The dissenting historians are performing an important public service by making the dishonesty of The New York Times Magazine’s feature a matter of record.

The reviews of the 1619 Project are in.

It is “a very unbalanced, one-sided account.” It is “wrong in so many ways.” It is “not only ahistorical,” but “actually anti-historical.” It is “a tendentious and partial reading of American history.”

This is what top historians have said of the splashy New York Times feature on slavery in the U.S. that aspires to fundamentally reorient our understanding of American history and change what students are taught in the schools.

Given that the Times can’t necessarily be trusted to give a straight account in its news pages of Mitch McConnell’s latest tactical maneuver, it wouldn’t seem a natural source for objective truth on sensitive historical matters, and sure enough, the 1619 Project is shot through with an ideological radicalism that leads to rank distortions and laughable overreach.

The project has been controversial since it was first published in The New York Times Magazine last year, but its architects sneered at the critics as troglodyte conservatives (or “white historians”) unwilling to grapple with the country’s racial sins. Then the World Socialist Web Site — of all things — begin publishing interviews with eminent historians slamming the project.

All of the above quotations come from the website’s interviews with highly accomplished and respected historians — the Princeton professor James McPherson, author of the magisterial history of the Civil War, Battle Cry of Freedom; the formidable historian of the Revolutionary War period, Gordon Wood; the CUNY professor James Oakes, who specializes in the Civil War period; and the Lincoln scholar Richard Carwardine of Oxford University.

At the end of the year, the Times published an extraordinary letter from McPherson, Oakes, and Wood, as well as Sean Wilentz of Princeton and Victoria Bynum of Texas State University, demanding “prominent corrections of all the errors and distortions presented in the 1619 Project.”

“These errors, which concern major events, cannot be described as interpretation or ‘framing,’” the historians wrote. “They are matters of verifiable fact, which are the foundation of both honest scholarship and honest journalism. They suggest a displacement of historical understanding by ideology. Dismissal of objections on racial grounds — that they are the objections of only ‘white historians’ — has affirmed that displacement.”

Silverstein counters by invoking disquiet among American slaveholders over the landmark Somerset decision in England in 1772 that found that chattel slavery wasn’t supported under the “natural law.” Yet nothing in the historical record suggests that the decision, which didn’t apply to the colonies, played a role in precipitating the revolution. Silverstein also notes the so-called Dunmore’s Proclamation by the royal governor of Virginia in late 1775 offering freedom to slaves who joined with British forces. By this point, though, the revolution was already underway (the First Continental Congress met in 1774; Lexington and Concord came earlier in 1775).

Nothing is going to budge the Times from its view that slavery is the central story of America, because establishing that is the entire point of the 1619 Project. Nonetheless, the dissenting historians are performing an important public service. They are making the dishonesty of the project a matter of record, and might, in so doing, cause educational institutions to think twice before adopting it wholesale into their curricula.

At least the Times’ assault on the nation’s historical memory is not going unanswered.

Consistent with the legislative leadership's statement to "pause" the federal program in Tennessee so that the state's Tenth Amendment lawsuit challenging the program, can proceed unimpeded.

Tennessee's Tenth Amendment lawsuit objects to the federal government forcing the state to pay certain costs which support the resettlement program but which the federal government has chosen to shift to the states without their consent.

When the federal government passed the Refugee Act of 1980, they also authorized 3 full years of reimbursement of certain state incurred costs like the state-funded part of the Medicaid program (TennCare) which refugees can access if they meet the eligibility requirements. The 3 full years of state cost reimbursement was for each refugee resettled in the state.

For refugees who were not eligible for state Medicaid programs, Congress also authorized 3 years of a refugee medical assistance grant.

Almost immediately after launching the program, Congress began reducing its own appropriation for refugee assistance and by 1991, completely stopped all reimbursement to states and reduced the assistance to refugees not eligible for TennCare and/or TANF, to 8 months.

Several federal reports admit to the forced cost shift to the states.

Gov. Bredesen withdrew the state from the resettlement program in late 2007; in 2017, the Tennessee General Assembly filed it's lawsuit challenging the federally coerced expenditure of state funds for the federal program. Lawyers representing the state are currently preparing an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gov. Lee's consent undermines the efforts of the General Assembly regarding the lawsuit but also means that he has consented to state taxpayers being forced to pay the state and a portion of the federal costs of the program.

Federal dollars do not cover the short and long-terms costs associated with the federal resettlement program.

2. Refugee placement rules

The federal rules which provide the per capita Reception & Placement grants from the State Dept. to the resettlement agencies, permit these agencies to place refugees anywhere from 50-100 miles from their offices.

Refugee resettlement agencies maintain offices and operations in Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville and Memphis. The mayors of each county have indicated they will submit their consent letters to the U.S. State Dept. per the President's Executive Order.

This means that consenting counties can place refugees in non-consenting counties.

State Dept. placement data shows that this has already been the pattern in other years.

Gov. Lee did not seek input from either the legislature or county executives about consenting to refugee placements under the President's Executive Order.

3. Unmet needs of Tennesseans should take precedence over the federal program

WHEREAS, in 2016, with overwhelming support in the State House and the Senate, the Tennessee General Assembly passed SJR467 and subsequently filed a lawsuit which is on-going challenging the federal refugee resettlement program for violating the Tenth Amendment; and

WHEREAS, generally, the lawsuit alleges the commandeering of state funds to pay costs associated with the refugee resettlement program which have been shifted to the state without its consent by the federal government; and

WHEREAS, the transferred federal costs are ultimately being paid by Tennessee state taxpayers; and

WHEREAS, President Trump issued Executive Order 13888, Enhancing State and Local Involvement in Refugee Resettlement which requires written consent from both the Governor and the chief executive officer of the local government (county or county equivalent) for the initial resettlement of refugees into specific communities; and

WHEREAS, the U.S. State Department Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration has operationalized the consent requirement through the FY2020 Notice of Funding Opportunity for Reception and Placement Program (Funding Notice) issued on November 6, 2019; and

WHEREAS, the Funding Notice permits federally contracted refugee resettlement agencies to resettle different groups of refugees anywhere from 50 to 100 miles away from the resettlement agency offices in consenting counties such that non-consenting counties cities and towns can be forced to participate in the initial resettlement of refugees; and

WHEREAS, John Cooper, Mayor of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County has issued a letter of consent to U.S. Secretary Mike Pompeo and it is anticipated that Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, Knox County Glen Jacobs and Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger will do the same; and

WHEREAS, U.S. State Department reports show that upon arrival refugees have previously been resettled in locations including Clarksville, LaVergne, Smyrna, Murfreesboro, Mt. Juliet, Franklin, Spring Hill, Shelbyville, Gallatin, Johnson City; and

WHEREAS, Governor Lee by letter dated December 18, 2019, to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “per the terms of Executive Order 13888” has consented to “initial refugee resettlement in Tennessee” with no exemption for non-consenting counties; and

WHEREAS, by letter dated December 18, 2019, to Lt. Governor Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton Governor Lee defines his consent as “valid initially for one year” in conflict with the terms of Executive Order 13888 and the Funding Notice which only requires consent for the period of time June 1, 2020 through September 30, 2020; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED that ____________ does not want to be forced into participating in the federal refugee resettlement program due to either Governor Lee’s consent and/or being within the permissible placement radius of a resettlement agency office.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that ________________ requests that Governor Lee retract his consent for initial resettlement in Tennessee for both the one year period of time as stated in his letter and/or the actual consent period required by the Funding Notice.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that _____________ requests that in the event Governor Lee does not retract his consent for initial refugee resettlement, that he submit a revised letter of consent to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and to Lt. Governor Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton exempting non-consenting counties from forced participation in the initial resettlement of refugees in Tennessee.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that ___________ requests that Governor Lee by written notice inform the resettlement agencies which maintain offices and operations in Tennessee that they may not place arriving refugees in non-consenting counties.

Hillary Clinton blamed the Electoral College for her stunning defeat in the 2016 presidential election in her latest memoirs, “What Happened.”

Some have claimed that the Electoral College is one of the most dangerous institutions in American politics.

Why? They say the Electoral College system, as opposed to a simple majority vote, distorts the one-person, one-vote principle of democracy because electoral votes are not distributed according to population.

To back up their claim, they point out that the Electoral College gives, for example, Wyoming citizens disproportionate weight in a presidential election.

Put another way, Wyoming, a state with a population of about 600,000, has one member in the House of Representatives and two members in the U.S. Senate, which gives the citizens of Wyoming three electoral votes, or one electoral vote per 200,000 people.

California, our most populous state, has more than 39 million people and 55 electoral votes, or approximately one vote per 715,000 people.

Comparatively, individuals in Wyoming have nearly four times the power in the Electoral College as Californians.

Many people whine that using the Electoral College instead of the popular vote and majority rule is undemocratic. I’d say that they are absolutely right. Not deciding who will be the president by majority rule is not democracy.

But the Founding Fathers went to great lengths to ensure that we were a republic and not a democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or any other of our founding documents.

How about a few quotations expressed by the Founders about democracy?

In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wanted to prevent rule by majority faction, saying, “Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

John Adams warned in a letter, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.”

Edmund Randolph said, “That in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”

Then-Chief Justice John Marshall observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

The Founders expressed contempt for the tyranny of majority rule, and throughout our Constitution, they placed impediments to that tyranny. Two houses of Congress pose one obstacle to majority rule. That is, 51 senators can block the wishes of 435 representatives and 49 senators.

The president can veto the wishes of 535 members of Congress. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto.

To change the Constitution requires not a majority but a two-thirds vote of both houses, and if an amendment is approved, it requires ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures.

Finally, the Electoral College is yet another measure that thwarts majority rule. It makes sure that the highly populated states—today, mainly 12 on the east and west coasts, cannot run roughshod over the rest of the nation. That forces a presidential candidate to take into consideration the wishes of the other 38 states.

Those Americans obsessed with rule by popular majorities might want to get rid of the Senate, where states, regardless of population, have two senators.

Should we change representation in the House of Representatives to a system of proportional representation and eliminate the guarantee that each state gets at least one representative?

Currently, seven states with populations of 1 million or fewer have one representative, thus giving them disproportionate influence in Congress.

While we’re at it, should we make all congressional acts by majority rule? When we’re finished with establishing majority rule in Congress, should we then move to change our court system, which requires unanimity in jury decisions, to a simple majority rule?

My question is: Is it ignorance of or contempt for our Constitution that fuels the movement to abolish the Electoral College?

This article has been republished with permission from The Daily Signal.

Truly, with the left, political wars know no bounds. Nothing’s sacred; not when it comes to the leftists’ drive to succeed.

Here’s what AAE put out in a press release: “Democrat ministers Rev. Jim Wallis and allies are now touring many states on ‘Vote Common Good’ buses to … split the evangelical vote before the mid-term elections. The AAE video features the newly released voice recording of [Jim] Wallis of Sojourners as he publicly denied that he was a recipient of Soros funding.”

But guess what?

His denial’s proven a bit — umm, wrong.

Soros-tied Open Society money and grant dollars have not only flowed by the hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Sojourners, AAE reported. But Soros-tied Open Society money and grant dollars have been flowing to the Sojourners for some time.

“Soros Funding of Sojourners Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg,” wrote National Review in August of 2010.

“George Soros Funding Jim Wallis and Sojourners,” wrote Crisis Magazine that same month and year, which went on to report: “The funding from Soros’s foundation, The Open Society, was revealed by Marvin Olasky in World magazine.”

‘Lest the significance goes unrecognized: The Sojourners is a far-left group that masquerades as a Christian outlet, bent on doing God’s work, but that far more often seems to do nothing but Democrats’ will.

“We are evangelicals, Catholics, Pentecostals and Protestants; progressives and conservatives; blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians; women and men; young and old … [and] seek to discover the intersection of faith, politics, and culture,” Sojo.net reads.

Sounds honorable enough. But how come that intersection never leads down a conservative path?

The organization’s magazine puts out such thoughts as this: “No Wall Between Amigos.” And this: “Conservative Court-Packing Isn’t About Abortion — It’s About Culture: If the Right really cares about abortion, they should reduce poverty.” And this: “In the Midst of a Political Emergency: The administration is threatening the soul of this nation.”

There’s nothing pro-Donald Trump, pro-conservative, pro-limited government, pro-Constitution about this group’s goals — or, for that matter, about the Vote Common Good bus tour, currently winding through 31 cities of America.

Vote Common Good executive director Doug Pagitt, who’s also profiled on the Sojourners’ Internet site as a mover and shaker in bringing about “a more generous Christian conversation,” said during a recent Washington Journal appearance on C-SPAN that “we believe the Trump administration needs to be restrained” and that he simply wants Americans to “consider the common good when they vote.” Not the Constitution? Hmm.

What’s going on here is not so much Christianity as it is partisan politicking under cover of religious teaching. It’s the furtherance of a George Soros style of progressivism, but cloaked in Christianity — and backed by George Soros bucks — and made all the worse by the initial denials of the George Soros ties.

Wallis ultimately admitted the Sojourners received money from Soros-tied groups. Pagitt, when asked on C-SPAN about Vote Common Good’s sources of funding, ducked and racked it up to “private donations,” before spinning the conversation off rapidly in a public relations direction.

But isn’t truth a core concept of Christianity?

If there’s nothing to hide — if the Sojourners and the Vote Common Good bus tour and all this so-called Christian political activity is really aimed at doing Christian works — why not blare forth the sources of funding? Why not shed the light on the behind-scenes influencers?

The answer’s obvious.

“Americans hate manipulation,” said AAE spokesperson Kelly Monroe Kullberg, in a statement. “Anti-American globalists like Soros are funding a growth industry of paid anarchists and political activists to divide and weaken America, including the Church.”

Indeed. Exactly.

Christians, beware. Patriots, be on guard.

Anyone can toss down a Christian card, even an atheist. But a clue to identify an anti-American enemy is the wolves always want Big Government, bigger government, a more powerful centralized system with weakened rights for the individual — and if it’s secret Soros dollars and Bible-thumping that gets them there, so be it.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.

A new analysis finds that immigration will dramatically reshape the Electoral College map in favor of the Democratic Party after completion of the 2020 census.

Rising immigrant populations around the United States will result in several solidly Democratic states gaining more seats in the House of Representatives at the expense of solidly Republican states, the study by the Center for Immigration Studies finds. The shift ultimately will give the Democratic Party more influence in the Electoral College, CIS says.

As the 2020 census approaches, the Center for Immigration Studies conducted the study to predict what the Electoral College map will look like after the counting is done.

Under current policy, all individuals are included in the population count, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. Democrat-dominated states are expected to be bolstered with more congressional representation—thus giving them more influence in the Electoral College—thanks to their burgeoning immigrant populations.

All immigrant populations—including naturalized citizens, legal residents, and illegal aliens—and their American-born children will redistribute 26 House seats in 2020, the CIS study predicts.

Of the 26 seats predicted to shift, 24 are expected to be taken away from states that voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Ohio is expected to lose three seats; Pennsylvania and Michigan likely will lose two; and 18 states likely will lose one seat: Arkansas, Alabama, Idaho, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Louisiana, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, and West Virginia, according to the study.

California, already a behemoth of the Electoral College, is predicted to gain 11 seats after the 2020 census is completed. New York likely will gain four more seats. New Jersey likely will come out with two more seats, and Massachusetts and Illinois likely will each gain one more seat.

The only traditionally red state to see gains is Texas, which is expected to notch four more House seats. Florida, which is considered a swing state but trends toward the GOP, will earn three more seats, under the CIS analysis. Rhode Island and Minnesota are expected to lose one congressional district each.

“While it’s clear that American citizens in low-immigration states lose from mass immigration, the winners are not necessarily the non-citizens who cause the reapportionment, since they cannot vote or otherwise fully take part in the political process. Instead, it is citizens who live in the same districts with non-citizens whose political power is enhanced,” the authors of the CIS study concluded, adding:

Put simply, in a district in which a large share of the population cannot vote, those who do vote count more than citizens in districts where almost everyone is an American citizen. Put a different way, large noncitizen populations take voting power from some Americans and give it to other American citizens in high-immigration districts.

– – –

Jason Hopkins is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Solidarity March with Immigrants” by Fibonacci Blue. CC BY 2.0.

Former Planned Parenthood Instructor: We Pushed Sex Ed on Kids to Create a Market for Abortion

Former sex educator Monica Cline said Planned Parenthood pushes sex education that “grooms” children for promiscuity and leads to abortion.

Cline worked as a sexual health education instructor in collaboration with Planned Parenthood in Texas for ten years, she told the Daily Caller News Foundation. She started out as an HIV prevention educator in 1996 with Center for Health Training, now known as Cardea Services.

She was later trained by the Director of Prevention Education at Planned Parenthood in Austin, Texas, in 1997 and would go on to become Title X Training Manager for Texas and New Mexico.

“We have to approach this and look at your audience and realize that they’ve probably done anything and everything related to sex,” the Planned Parenthood Director of Prevention Education told Cline at the beginning of her instruction. Cline has asked that the director, who has passed away, remain anonymous out of respect for the director’s family.

“It was very explicit,” Cline said, revealing she was told she must discuss all sexual topics with students, including, “Oral, vaginal, and anal sex, and the use of sex toys.”

The director showed Cline several Planned Parenthood case studies that showed girls as young as 10 years old coming to Planned Parenthood for help with injuries, the removal of foreign objects and abortions. The studies convinced Cline that something must be done to help these young women.

“Wow, you’ve convinced me,” she said she told the educator. “How do I teach these girls not to have sex?”

“No dear, we aren’t teaching them not to have sex,” the educator told her. “We are teaching them how to do it safer.”

Planned Parenthood teaches students risk reduction rather than teaching children how to have healthy relationships and to date in groups, Cline said.

“Risk reduction is simply telling them how to make the high risk safer by using lubrication and condoms,” she explained. “The next step is to make them understand they need to be tested for STD’s every couple months.”

Planned Parenthood’s sex education grooms students for promiscuity, Cline believes, and this promiscuity leads them to abortion. “The sex education grooms them for promiscuity. Grooms them for STD treatment, and grooms them for abortion,” she said.

She explained that children’s introduction to sex is “illicit sex,” referring to a video children were shown at a Waco, Texas, conference where Cline was present.

Cline taught twelve and thirteen-year-old students a module on healthy relationships while her co-worker taught the same students a module on STD training, which included a video depicting a couple who has just had sex.

The video, called Nicole’s Choice, and sold by sexual educators for $125, shows a girl wake up after a one night stand and realize she must handle the sexually transmitted disease she received from her hookup.

“Teens are being given false ideas that condoms will cover all the bases,” Cline added. “They do tell them to get tested and treated – which means coming back to the clinic – and if they are pregnant they are encouraged to get an abortion.”

As a sexual health educator, Cline says she was taught to identify with what students are going through and ultimately lead them to choose abortion.

“We were supposed to identify what they are going through, “Cline explained, “Say, ‘you’re just a teenager, the last thing you want is a baby.’ Identify with her fears. ‘Your parents are probably going to be so mad at you. We can take care of this for you, it’s not a problem.’”

“They always went to the extreme,” Cline said, saying that the employees would say, “If we don’t do this for this girl, she will live in poverty. Or her parents will commit acts of violence.”

This influenced how Planned Parenthood employees treated prostitutes or young girls who came in with men who were not their fathers, Cline said.

They believed that if they reported cases of pimps and prostitutes, pimps would not see Planned Parenthood as a safe place to bring women for healthcare anymore. Cline said the employees believed it was better to treat the victims and keep the secret.

Cline attended a human trafficking conference in 2009 while she still worked with Planned Parenthood, thinking she could teach Planned Parenthood employees how to spot red flags and aid victims of human trafficking. At this point, she was Title X Training Manager for Texas and New Mexico.

But when she returned to a Corpus Christi, Texas, clinic to explain her findings to employees, she was met with dismissal.

“Honey, if she’s not having sex with this man this month, she’ll be having sex with another man next month,” Cline was told. The behavior caused Cline to leave her job at the Center for Health Training in 2009.

“Their view of our children is very skewed,” Cline said. “They believe that this is what our children want. They don’t see our children as victims, they see them as willing participants.”

Planned Parenthood and Cardea Services did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the DCNF.

LifeNews Note: Mary Margaret Olohan writes for Daily Caller. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience.

Sorry If You’re Offended, but Socialism Leads to Misery and Destitution

On the same day that Venezuela’s “democratically” elected socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, whose once-wealthy nation now has citizens foraging for food, announced he was lopping five zeros off the country’s currency to create a “stable financial and monetary system,” Meghan McCain of “The View” was the target of internet-wide condemnation for having stated some obvious truths about collectivism.

During the same week we learned that the democratic socialist president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, is accused of massacring hundreds of protesters whose economic futures have been decimated by his economic policies, Soledad O’Brien and writers at outlets ranging from GQ, to BuzzFeed, to the Daily Beast were telling McCain to cool her jets.

In truth, McCain was being far too calm. After all, socialism is the leading man-made cause of death and misery in human existence. Whether implemented by a mob or a single strongman, collectivism is a poverty generator, an attack on human dignity, and a destroyer of individual rights.

It’s true that not all socialism ends in the tyranny of Leninism or Stalinism or Maoism or Castroism or Ba’athism or Chavezism or the Khmer Rouge—only most of it does. And no, New York primary winner Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t intend to set up gulags in Alaska. Most so-called democratic socialists—the qualifier affixed to denote that they live in a democratic system and have no choice but to ask for votes—aren’t consciously or explicitly endorsing violence or tyranny.

Next year, absolutely everything is on the line. Defend your principles before it is too late. Find out more now >>

But when they adopt the term “socialism” and the ideas associated with it, they deserve to be treated with the kind of contempt and derision that all those adopting authoritarian philosophies deserve.

But look: Norway!

Socialism is perhaps the only ideology that Americans are asked to judge solely based on its piddling “successes.” Don’t you dare mention Albania or Algeria or Angola or Burma or Congo or Cuba or Ethiopia or Laos or Somalia or Vietnam or Yemen or, well, any other of the dozens of other inconvenient places socialism has been tried. Not when there are a handful of Scandinavian countries operating generous welfare state programs propped up by underlying vibrant capitalism and natural resources.

Of course, socialism exists on a spectrum, and even if we accept that the Nordic social program experiments are the most benign iteration of collectivism, they are certainly not the only version. Pretending otherwise would be like saying, “The police state of Singapore is more successful than Denmark. Let’s give it a spin.”

It turns out, though, that the “Denmark is awesome!” talking point is only the second-most preposterous one used by socialists. It goes something like this: If you’re a fan of “roads, schools, libraries, and such,” although you may not even be aware of it, you are also a supporter of socialism.

This might come as a surprise to some, but every penny of the $21,206 spent in Ocasio-Cortez’s district each year on each student, rich or poor, is provided with the profits derived from capitalism. There is no welfare system, no library that subsists on your good intentions. Having the state take over the entire health care system could rightly be called a socialistic endeavor, but pooling local tax dollars to put books in a building is called local government.

It should also be noted that today’s socialists get their yucks by pretending collectivist policies only lead to innocuous outcomes like local libraries. But for many years they were also praising the dictators of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the nation’s most successful socialist, isn’t merely impressed with the goings-on in Denmark. Not very long ago, he lauded Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela as an embodiment of the “American dream,” even more so than the United States.

Socialists like to blame every inequity, the actions of every greedy criminal, every downturn, and every social ill on the injustice of capitalism. But none of them admit that capitalism has been the most effective way to eliminate poverty in history.

Today, in former socialist states like India, there have been big reductions in poverty thanks to increased capitalism. In China, where communism sadly still deprives more than a billion people of their basic rights, hundreds of millions benefit from a system that is slowly shedding socialism. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the extreme poverty rate in the world has been cut in half. And it didn’t happen because Southeast Asians were raising the minimum wage.

In the United States, only 5 percent of people are even aware that poverty has fallen in the world, according to the Gapminder Foundation, which is almost certainly in part due to the left’s obsession with “inequality” and normalization of “socialism.”

Nearly half of American millennials would rather live in a socialist society than in a capitalist one, according to a YouGov poll. That said, only 71 percent of those asked were able to properly identify either. We can now see the manifestation of this ignorance in our elections and “The View” co-host Joy Behar.

But if all you really champion are some higher taxes and more generous social welfare, stop associating yourself with a philosophy that usually brings destitution and death. Call it something else. If not, McCain has every right to associate you with the ideology you embrace.

Sorry If You’re Offended, but Socialism Leads to Misery and Destitution

On the same day that Venezuela’s “democratically” elected socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, whose once-wealthy nation now has citizens foraging for food, announced he was lopping five zeros off the country’s currency to create a “stable financial and monetary system,” Meghan McCain of “The View” was the target of internet-wide condemnation for having stated some obvious truths about collectivism.

During the same week we learned that the democratic socialist president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, is accused of massacring hundreds of protesters whose economic futures have been decimated by his economic policies, Soledad O’Brien and writers at outlets ranging from GQ, to BuzzFeed, to the Daily Beast were telling McCain to cool her jets.

In truth, McCain was being far too calm. After all, socialism is the leading man-made cause of death and misery in human existence. Whether implemented by a mob or a single strongman, collectivism is a poverty generator, an attack on human dignity, and a destroyer of individual rights.

It’s true that not all socialism ends in the tyranny of Leninism or Stalinism or Maoism or Castroism or Ba’athism or Chavezism or the Khmer Rouge—only most of it does. And no, New York primary winner Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t intend to set up gulags in Alaska. Most so-called democratic socialists—the qualifier affixed to denote that they live in a democratic system and have no choice but to ask for votes—aren’t consciously or explicitly endorsing violence or tyranny.

Next year, absolutely everything is on the line. Defend your principles before it is too late. Find out more now >>

But when they adopt the term “socialism” and the ideas associated with it, they deserve to be treated with the kind of contempt and derision that all those adopting authoritarian philosophies deserve.

But look: Norway!

Socialism is perhaps the only ideology that Americans are asked to judge solely based on its piddling “successes.” Don’t you dare mention Albania or Algeria or Angola or Burma or Congo or Cuba or Ethiopia or Laos or Somalia or Vietnam or Yemen or, well, any other of the dozens of other inconvenient places socialism has been tried. Not when there are a handful of Scandinavian countries operating generous welfare state programs propped up by underlying vibrant capitalism and natural resources.

Of course, socialism exists on a spectrum, and even if we accept that the Nordic social program experiments are the most benign iteration of collectivism, they are certainly not the only version. Pretending otherwise would be like saying, “The police state of Singapore is more successful than Denmark. Let’s give it a spin.”

It turns out, though, that the “Denmark is awesome!” talking point is only the second-most preposterous one used by socialists. It goes something like this: If you’re a fan of “roads, schools, libraries, and such,” although you may not even be aware of it, you are also a supporter of socialism.

This might come as a surprise to some, but every penny of the $21,206 spent in Ocasio-Cortez’s district each year on each student, rich or poor, is provided with the profits derived from capitalism. There is no welfare system, no library that subsists on your good intentions. Having the state take over the entire health care system could rightly be called a socialistic endeavor, but pooling local tax dollars to put books in a building is called local government.

It should also be noted that today’s socialists get their yucks by pretending collectivist policies only lead to innocuous outcomes like local libraries. But for many years they were also praising the dictators of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the nation’s most successful socialist, isn’t merely impressed with the goings-on in Denmark. Not very long ago, he lauded Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela as an embodiment of the “American dream,” even more so than the United States.

Socialists like to blame every inequity, the actions of every greedy criminal, every downturn, and every social ill on the injustice of capitalism. But none of them admit that capitalism has been the most effective way to eliminate poverty in history.

Today, in former socialist states like India, there have been big reductions in poverty thanks to increased capitalism. In China, where communism sadly still deprives more than a billion people of their basic rights, hundreds of millions benefit from a system that is slowly shedding socialism. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the extreme poverty rate in the world has been cut in half. And it didn’t happen because Southeast Asians were raising the minimum wage.

In the United States, only 5 percent of people are even aware that poverty has fallen in the world, according to the Gapminder Foundation, which is almost certainly in part due to the left’s obsession with “inequality” and normalization of “socialism.”

Nearly half of American millennials would rather live in a socialist society than in a capitalist one, according to a YouGov poll. That said, only 71 percent of those asked were able to properly identify either. We can now see the manifestation of this ignorance in our elections and “The View” co-host Joy Behar.

But if all you really champion are some higher taxes and more generous social welfare, stop associating yourself with a philosophy that usually brings destitution and death. Call it something else. If not, McCain has every right to associate you with the ideology you embrace.